1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of computer systems and, more particularly, to testing server latencies in computer systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Computer systems may include multiple clients coupled to a server. A server may be configured to store information such that the information may be accessed by multiple users using one of the clients. A server may operate using an operating system such as Solaris, Linux, Windows 2000, or Windows NT. An operating system may be configured to create users that may access files on the server. These users may be given varying access privileges to information on the server and may be included in a group where each member of the group may be given a predefined set of access privileges within the system.
As computer systems become more powerful, servers and their operating systems may become able to support increasing numbers of users in a given system. As the number of users in the system increases, the number of tasks that the server may need to perform may also increase. The tasks of a server or more particularly, the operating system operating on the server, may include creating and deleting users, logging in and logging out users, performing accesses to files on the server on behalf of users, and possibly executing applications or other programs on the server. As the number of users and hence, the number of tasks increases, the latency in performing a given task may increase as the task may not be completed until busy resources within the server become available. It would be desirable to measure server latencies in a system with multiple users. It would further be desirable to measure server latencies in a system with multiple users where the users are modeled according to an organization profile. A system and method to broadly measure server latencies is needed.